Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category

The story: “Bad Little Kid,” collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. First published in 2014 (in German and French, interestingly enough). Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: Throughout his life, George Hallas is visited by an unaging schoolyard bully who appears every few years to murder somebody George holds dear. George eventually contrives to kill […]

The story: “L.T.’s Theory of Pets,” collected in Everything’s Eventual. First published in 1997. Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: A blue collar man named L.T. recounts a humorously embellished account of his failed marriage to his wife, Lulu, and the role that their pet dog and cat played in breaking up the marriage. What L.T. […]

The story: “Gramma,” collected in Skeleton Crew. First published in 1984. Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: Eleven-year-old George has been left alone for a few hours to care for his aging—and dying—grandmother, an unpleasant woman whom he has always feared. “Gramma” dies on his watch, but that’s not the end of it: Gramma was a […]

The story: “The Dune,” collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. First published in 2011. Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: As a child, Harvey Beecher discovered something bizarre: a tiny island with a sand dune on which, each day, is written the name of somebody who will soon die. Now a bitter old man, Beecher […]

The story: “Mile 81,” collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. First published in 2011. (Incomplete) Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: A bizarre, mostly-immobile alien creature, crudely camouflaged as a run-down vehicle, appears at an abandoned highway rest stop, where it waits for Good Samaritans to approach and then eats them. After a sequence of […]

The story: “Night Surf,” collected in Night Shift. First published in 1969 (but revised heavily for its inclusion in Night Shift a decade later). Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: A small band of teenagers has survived an apocalyptic plague that has wiped out most of the rest of the world’s population. But they’ve succumbed to […]

Whelp, the the aforementioned hiatus has continued. The “busy and distracting” elements I vaguely referred to in my last post actually turned out to be a medical condition the details of which I will spare you; but which has made it difficult to do much of anything in the evenings. Most of the time, when […]

The story: “Battleground,” collected in Night Shift. First published in 1972. Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: After murdering his latest target—a toy company executive—a hitman receives a package in the mail… from the victim’s mother. It’s full of little G.I. Joe toy soldiers, who come to life and wage an extended battle against the hitman […]

The story: The Langoliers, collected in Four Past Midnight. First published in 1990. Wikipedia entry here. Spoiler-filled synopsis: A handful of passengers on a red-eye flight across America wake up to find that the rest of the passengers—and the plane’s crew—have vanished into thin air. They manage to land the plane (one of the group […]

The story: “One for the Road,” collected in Night Shift. First published in 1977. Wikipedia entry here. Note that this post contains spoilers not only for “One for the Road,” but for the novel ‘Salem’s Lot. Spoiler-filled synopsis: An aging resident of small-town Maine relates a haunting story from his past involving the dead and […]